Across the nation

Posted: August 18, 2012 - 12:11am

WASHINGTON

The four-star general who headed U.S. Africa Command used military vehicles to shuttle his wife on shopping trips and to a spa and billed the government for a refueling stop overnight in Bermuda, where the couple stayed in a $750 suite, a Defense Department investigation has found.

A 99-page report alleges excessive unauthorized spending and travel costs for Gen. William “Kip” Ward, including lengthy stays at lavish hotels for Ward, his wife and his staff members, and the use of five-vehicle motorcades when he traveled to Washington.

It also said Ward and his wife, Joyce, accepted dinner and Broadway show tickets from a government contractor.

WEST MEMPHIS, Ark.

For nearly two decades, prison was the only home Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols and Jessie Misskelley Jr. knew.

Convicted as teenagers in the gruesome 1993 murders of three Cub Scouts in eastern Arkansas, the men known as the West Memphis Three were released Aug. 19, 2011, after years of questions about the evidence in the case and attention from such celebrities as Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder and the Dixie Chicks’ Natalie Maines, a Lubbock native. Now, they are trying to move forward while dealing with a new world of iPhones and Twitter as well as their own status as celebrities.

Echols is preparing to crisscross the country to promote his new book, “Life After Death.” Baldwin spent time on the set of “Devil’s Knot,” an upcoming movie about the case starring Reese Witherspoon and Colin Firth. Misskelley has been eking out a quiet life in the trailer park where he grew up near West Memphis.

DENVER

A bride is recovering from injuries after she was attacked by a pit bull mix and its owner at her wedding reception.

Brittany Cortez says the alleged attacker, Joel Nevarez, is a troubled childhood friend who was invited to her reception at a Denver home. She told KMGH-TV he let the dog drag her around “like a rag doll” and punched her in the face and head with brass knuckles at the party early Sunday.

Cortez thinks the attack was motivated by jealousy.

BRAINTREE, Mass.

When a store clerk gave a Massachusetts man a different kind of scratch-off lottery ticket than he asked for, he didn’t make a big deal about the mistake; he said he just “rolled with it.”

It was a good decision: He won $1 million.

Richard Brown of Taunton said he went into Gulf Taunton recently and asked for a $5 “Blue Ice 7s” ticket, but the clerk was distracted and instead gave him a “Sizzlin 7s” ticket.

DETROIT

A woman and two children found dead in a suburban Detroit home when officers went to notify her of her husband’s death in a fatal crash were stabbed with a butcher knife, police said Friday.

Police said officers entered the two-story home after finding the door ajar and getting no response. They found the bodies of Linda VanDerLinden and her two sons in separate bedrooms.

Van Buren Township police Capt. Gregory Laurain said an autopsy showed Linda VanDerLinden, 34, died of strangulation but had been stabbed in the chest. Her sons, Julien VanDerLinden, 7, and Matthew VanDerLinden, 4, had been stabbed multiple times in the chest and arms.